{"id":426,"date":"2023-04-13T22:25:59","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T22:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=426"},"modified":"2023-04-13T22:25:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T22:25:59","slug":"co-existent-opposites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/04\/13\/co-existent-opposites\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Existent Opposites"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really enjoyed reading the excerpts from Tennyson\u2019s In Memoriam A. H. H<\/em>. I especially liked how Tennyson played with opposites, especially Love and Grief, and sometimes even described them as co-existent. One example of this being his first poem in this sequence, in which Tennyson writes, \u201cLet Love clasp Grief lest both be drown\u2019d,\u201d (l. 9). While mourning the loss of Arthur, Tennyson couples these two concepts together, stating they need each other to stay afloat in this case. Overall this explains that Love cannot exist without Grief and vice versa. Although Tennyson doesn\u2019t mention this relationship between love and grief as explicitly in the remainder of his poems, he continues to hint at the connections between opposing emotions. In the twenty-seventh poem Tennyson writes, \u201c\u2019Tis better to have loved and lost \/ Than never to have loved at all\u201d (l. 15-16). This time Tennyson pairs love, a wonderful feeling, with loss, a not so wonderful feeling. While these concepts may seem like total opposites, Tennyson writes as if you can\u2019t have one without the other. Furthermore, Tennyson states that it\u2019s better to experience these emotions together than never experience either, further closing the gap between the two.<\/p>\n

Tennyson continues to examine \u201copposites\u201d in his twenty-fourth poem. In this case Tennyson pairs grief with gladness and low with relief: \u201cAnd is it that the haze of grief \/ Makes former gladness loom so great? \/ The lowness of the present state, \/ That sets the past in this relief?\u201d (l. 9-12). Starting with grief and gladness, Tennyson establishes this idea that grief illuminates memories of former happiness in trying times. Likewise, feeling \u201clow\u201d makes the speaker realize the relief he felt in the past. Here Tennyson is relying on the stark differences between these emotions to show how much he longs for the past when Arthur was still with him. Tennyson returns to the opposing but co-existent concepts of love and grief in the thirteenth poem. Here Tennyson writes, \u201cWhich weep a loss for ever new \/ A void where heart on heart reposed,\u201d (l. 5-6) and \u201cWhich weep the comrade of my choice, \/ An awful thought, a life removed, \/ The human-hearted man I loved,\u201d (l. 9-11). In both of these parts Tennyson discusses the grief that follows loss. In doing so he emphasizes that grief in a way stems from love because it is the loss of a loved one that causes this pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really enjoyed reading the excerpts from Tennyson\u2019s In Memoriam A. H. H. I especially liked how Tennyson played with opposites, especially Love and Grief, and sometimes even described them as co-existent. One example of this being his first poem in this sequence, in which Tennyson writes, \u201cLet Love clasp Grief lest both be drown\u2019d,\u201d … Continue reading Co-Existent Opposites<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}